My name is James R. Mitchener, and this is the life of a TCK

Tag Archives: expat

If you’ve read recently, you know I’m converting Third Culture Kid Life into a book called Third Culture Kid Life: Twenty Something where I’m publishing every single article in this collection written throughout my twenties and then writing a follow-up “looking back” segment at the end talking about my thoughts on that piece today. It has been a blast so far reading the work and responding in a way I’ve never done before, and as of today I’m just shy of 30 chapters of 50. Now, I need your help!

Below you’ll find two cover options. I need you to vote and tell me what your favourite is. I’m struggling between a graphical look and a photographic look. I want you to let me know, as readers of TCK Life, which one represents the life and mind of a TCK the best. I appreciate your help, and it means a lot! To satisfy any potential curiosity: yes, that’s a picture of my brother and me.

Like this:

I’ve been writing for TCKs for a decade now, and during that time I have watched the global trend of globalized thought shift to an incredibly positive outlook on humanity as a whole. I have been full of pride in my interactions with so many FCKs who have grown up from generations built on oppression who have opened their minds to a more unified way of thinking, embracing the necessity of innovation and adaptation to provide an avenue for a world in which we as humans are stronger because of an inherent desire to embrace difference rather than fear and oppress it.

As a global nomad, the past week has been incredibly hard for me. I’m sure it has been hard for many TCKs, honestly. The TCK community I have most contact with seems to be reflecting that sentiment heavily, but you might be different to the majority. If so, I respect that, and I humbly invite you to tell me why, as a TCK and global nomad, the past week has not been troubling for you.

For the rest of us out there, I wanted to tell you a few things:

First, I’m coming back. I’ve been gone too often lately pouring my time into my work and neglecting this arena built to encourage globalized thought and provide information for TCKs and the families and friends of TCKs alike by opening up insight into the inner workings of a TCK mind. This place was created as a safe space where you could ask me anything you wanted about being a TCK and not having a home or knowing where I belong, and my absence has gone on long enough. This past week has made me realize more than ever that something we need right now as people who live by globalization is a safe space. Third Culture Kid Life has been an avenue for dialogue and information sharing since its inception, and it’s time I bring that back.

Second, I want to promise you that I will not censor my words for fear of oppression, hatred, or any other reason. I do not like being political, I quite often find a significant amount of cross-party understanding in my views, and I am capable of drawing good from bad in most instances. But what the world is facing now, even if you aren’t living in America or have a passport from this country, is a leader who does not care about minorities, globalization, foreign policy, and worst of all, open communication. Censorship is already rampant, fueled by the office of the president, in a country that is supposed to be free. So, while I do not enjoy being political here, this isn’t about politics anymore. This is about the future of globalization and the core values that I, as a Third Culture Kid, believe in. And this collection, after all, is about the mind of one particular TCK. This TCK wants you to know what it looks like to him as the world he has dreamt of, one he slowly watched form over the years despite so many struggles and hardships, gets stripped away.

Third, I want to encourage you to use your voice for reason based on facts, not fiction. It is clear now, only a week into the next four years, that scientific thought and reason are no longer welcome in this country. The quest for knowledge was challenged constantly during the campaigns by the same man now sitting in the white house, and those challenges are now being put to extreme use. More than ever, you need to use your freedom to speak, and you need to use it with a basis of fact, reason, and logic. In a week, we have seen government agencies put in place for the benefit of the people be told they can no longer communicate with the public, that they cannot communicate with the press, and they cannot publish any scientific data without getting the approval of the white house who has no right or ability to vet the quality of that research.

This collection was designed to give TCKs without a home three things. First, a space where someone would tell them things that would hopefully make them see that the experiences they are struggling with aren’t just normal for a TCK, they are struggles that will one day become sources of empowerment. Second, an avenue for you to openly communicate with a TCK who will hold nothing back from you, answering any questions you want without bias. And third, a place of understanding for your friends and family to help you explain what it’s like to be you without requiring you to open yourself up in the capacity I have chosen to do.

This collection was built to bring people together. And today, as I feel myself becoming increasingly overcome with grief and concern for my love of this world, the people in it, and the pursuit of knowledge to better serve everyone on this planet, I am reminded heavily why I started writing here. I wanted to bring us together in my small way to support a global thought process. I wanted to do my part to make a better world for you. And no matter what happens going forward, I will not stop voicing my unwavering desire to build that world.

More than anything, I want you to know that I’m here for you, no matter what.

I’m turning 30 soon. This month, in fact. It doesn’t really mean anything to me personally. It’s just another rotation around the sun I’ve experienced, tallying 30. Well, actually, thanks to the Gregorian calendar not being entirely accurate, it’s probably going to be a little more than 30 years if you were to average out all the added seconds and minutes we’ve received. Or is it less? I don’t remember, I did the math once on how the past 30 years relative to me based on additions, subtractions, and alterations compounded by the incorrect value of a year impacted my time on earth in rotations around the sun, but I have no memory of the outcome. I probably did the math wrong too if we’re honest.

But that’s not the point, As usual, I’ve digressed. The point is, I had an idea. I’ve been writing this collection and The Illusive Home for a decade now. Granted, The Illusive Home is done, but it was the start of this, the realization that I was never done writing about the perspective of a TCK as he progressed through his life. So, like I said, I had an idea, one that I’ve been working on for a while now that I’m hoping to have completed just as I turn 30.

I’m turning the past decade’s worth of work into a book. That’s right, TCK Life, the digital collection, is going to become Third Culture Kid Life: Twenty Something. The objective is to take everything I wrote in my 20s and publish it as one cohesive collection, starting from the beginning and working to today. But that’s not all, because then I’d just be printing the internet and there’s no point in doing that. So, I’ve made some additions.

I’ve always said on here I’m not going to explain myself for my words. I’ll offer guidance, but if you draw a theme or an idea that’s yours. It helps you connect to the experiences if you do it that way. But there’s a lot of depth behind some of these pieces I’ve written that you don’t know all the details for. So, for every piece that ends up in the book, it’ll be followed with an explanation of the moment, looking back, from me. Each article you’ve read on TCK Life will have the look-back of a man at the end of his 20s, transitioning into another decade of TCK Life writing, and see what I think of these words, these experiences, today. Some of them will be looking as far back as 9 years ago. Others, will be looking back to this year.

I’ve already written some of these and I have to say I’ve enjoyed it. It’s neat looking back at the things I used to talk about, worry about, the problems I was facing at the time, and how they shaped me into the person writing now. But what’s most exciting is how that shapes this collection.

Third Culture Kid Life has always been about showing you what a TCK thinks and feels from the perspective of me. I’m just one in the field of many, and while I use central themes to the TCK experience, I leverage my personal experiences to inform other TCKs that they’re not alone in the roller coaster of adult TCK life they’re experiencing. More importantly, parents of existing and developing TCKs are a large chunk of my readership. Reading where I am now, and what I think of the past comments as I stand today might offer even further insight into the expectations of the TCK their developing, and that could be really helpful.

So, I wanted to let you know it was coming, and that I’m not done here. We’re about to start a whole new decade of my life, which means you’re going to get writings about what it’s like from a 30 something TCK as well. I don’t feel any different personally, but looking back, a lot has changed. And that, to me, is quite exciting.

I’ll also be writing a book exclusive article that’s about the end of my 20s and a summary of my life as a TCK so far, which will talk about changes in the world, changes in myself, and how I’ve seen myself evolve as a TCK over the years in reflection. Also, there’s an introduction that’s entirely unique, so there’s quite a bit of new content for my supporting readers looking to add the book to their bookshelf.

Thank you for all your support, and I’ll update this page with links as soon as the book is available. Oh, it’ll be both digital and paperback, so you pick if you’re interested.

Thanks again for all your support.

UPDATE: January 10, 2017 – So, it turns out this is going to be a longer project than expected, which is great news for my readers! My “Looking Back” portions as I’ve decided to name them are ending up as long as the articles themselves, in many cases longer. I’m also doing them on ever single piece, so we’re looking at double the content of what you’ve read so far, with every single article you’ve read here having its own “Looking Back” accompanying article about how I view that event, perception, or experience today.

Like this:

You’re going to be reading a lot of articles about the British vote to exit the EU today, or as it is has been called to sound more flashy and less terrifying over the past months, the Brexit. You’re going to read a lot about how the economy is in turmoil, about how Britain has effectively thrown the world into a spiral, or foresight on what is going to happen with other EU member countries now that Britain has chosen to leave. They’re all right, and they’re all valid articles.

This isn’t one of those articles, though.

If this isn’t your first time here, then you know that I’m a Third Culture Kid (TCK). You know that this collection is about the world, about viewing it through the eyes of a TCK, about the beauty of travel and the connectivity of all of us in a rapidly globalizing society. You know that I write here to inspire confidence in fellow TCKs who have not crossed the threshold of their national identity crisis, to show them that in the end, they’ll find peace in knowing they aren’t a citizen of a country, that their lack of patriotism driven by a lack of national identity doesn’t make them weak, but makes them stronger. You know that this collection is, for the most part, full of love where it may fail to achieve inspiration.

This isn’t one of those articles, though.

You see, I’m about to go to bed tonight in my house in America, 4000 miles away from my birth country of England, and when I fall asleep, should I fall asleep, 51.8% of the people in the country I was born in, a country for which I too hold a passport, will be waking up feeling a sense of national pride, while 48.2% will be waking up feeling a sense of national shame. That being said, perhaps the stats of how the vote turned out will not directly reflect the emotions of those reading them when they see the state of the world they created, and I’m sure there will be plenty of articles covering exactly that.

This isn’t one of those articles, though.

This article is about what my birth country did to me today. It’s personal, but then, it’s also so much more than that. It’s international, is touches everyone, even those who will not share my pain or even understand my words, because today, I was robbed of something I have taken for granted for so many years; today my birth country stripped me of my passport to a significant chunk of the world, and it did so out of ignorance of economics, ignorance of international relations, and ignorance of globalization of the people of the world.

Today, England decided to go against everything the first world has been striving to achieve for the entire course of my 29 year life. It decided that walls were better built than torn down, that separation from a global market was better than working alongside it, and it decided that free transfer of persons across its boarders, in or out, was not the way of tomorrow.

You see, I hold a UK passport. And as a TCK, what happened today is devastating. Today marks the day that will begin the breaking of my access to the EU, that free trade of my person into any country of theirs, to live and work and contribute to the economy of culture and capital. Today, the country of my birth, the country I had so much pride in as a man of international identity because of its commitment to an open, expansive, globalized society that tore down walls and showed the world a new way to be better than the boarders we have chosen to imagine and the patriotism we hide behind, decided that the real path to our future lies in isolation.

Today, England built a wall around its society. And in doing so, it didn’t just steal access to the world from me, it stole the very idea of a world without boarders from everyone. And it did so with cheering crowds.

As an man of no national identity, as a man of the world, no as a child of the world, as a Third Culture Kid, I can think of no greater tragedy to the forward motion of internationalism and globalization to date than what Britain just did with roaring crowds and celebrations.

Today, for the first time in my life, I am ashamed to hold a passport to the United Kingdom.

Today, for the first time in my life, the country of my birth betrayed me by betraying the world.

And so here’s my Brexit: Goodbye, England. I can no longer call you “home,” whatever lack of a meaning that has for this wandering TCK, because no home of mine would sit behind a closed border watching globalization fail to thunderous applause.

I challenge you to find a Third Culture Kid (TCK) out there who doesn’t agree with this statement: The internet is the purest and most openly accessible form of connection between cultures currently in existence, the single exception being one’s ability to walk into a country and immerse themselves in the culture they’re surrounded by.

With talks of Net Neutrality sky-rocketing again in the United States (I say sky-rocketing with full knowledge that while there are many people making a lot of noise on the issue, there are far too few given the fact that the internet is a vital part of almost everyone’s lives), the fact that we may very well lose a free and open internet is becoming a topic of concern for anyone living in this country. For the general public and life-long residents of the US, a free and open internet represents a connection to free speech and expression coupled with a gateway to free market enterprise.

The internet is home to everything now, and with that complete involvement in our lives, we find ourselves turning to it in order to acquire information, purchase anything we want, connect with friends and loved ones, start a business, get our name heard, learn new things, relax and unwind, watch television, follow rising stars, listen to music, find new friends, develop contacts, apply for jobs, work our jobs, and ultimately: connect ourselves to the world.

For America, one’s ability to start a company and rise to success has been the driving force of free market enterprise, and with the creation of the internet, that drive has never been stronger. People with highly marketable skills in isolated industries now have a portal of access that allows them to get their name into the world, to create a company that focusses on something unique and desired, and share it across a digital path that spans the entire expanse of our planet. And we do it all under the guise that our information is created equally, no matter what information we choose to share.

Unfortunately for Americans, that belief in a free and open internet is currently nothing more than a lie we are telling ourselves to help us feel better about our existence. And that’s where the Net Neutrality debate comes into play. If you are not aware of what’s happening with Net Neutrality, the FCC, and ISPs across the United States, I encourage you to watch this video. It explains, in as simple as a way as I can conceive, just what we were all so upset about earlier this year. You can read the comments, too, to get a nice spread of just how intense this conversation has gotten:
It turns out that when you allow a company to have a monopoly on an asset, they will often abuse the power of possessing that monopoly for profitable gain. It is foolish for us to blame them for this, as it is a natural part of running a business, but you also have to remember that one of the core values of the free market is that competition is fundamentally good for business. ISPs will argue all day that they do not have a monopoly, but their arguments are nothing short of propaganda that permeates the most hated industry by customers in the nation. In truth, they don’t have a monopoly in most markets. But their lack of competition based on mutual gain might as well be.

I’m not a fan of regulation. I don’t like governments at all and honestly believe them to be incredibly inefficient, money sucking machines driven by idiots, crooks, and thieves. But, unfortunately, there are exceptions to every rule, and while I am a free market person to my core, I am not foolish enough to believe that with ISPs being the same people that want us to watch cable television and buy premium shows, that they’re not going to bully us into them getting what they want. We’ve already entered into a slippery slope of being charged twice for access to an internet we never really recieved in the first place. And if you don’t agree with that, perhaps you forgot about Netflix and Comcast‘s spat earlier this year?

The thing is, as a TCK, the internet is more to me than just a tool for domestic business. Granted, I use it every single day for just that being the Marketing Manager for a rather prominent waste company, authoring this collection, and managing various other private contract roles with different organizations. But it’s bigger than that. It’s a point of connection, and my ability to do those things is driven by a free and open internet in which my traffic is just as valuable as anyone else’s in the eyes of neutrality, and it’s the consumer who decides my worth, not an ISP.

And this is bigger than you think. Hundreds of massive companies, including Google and Netflix have already sided with Net Neutrality advocates everywhere. And that’s a big deal if you think about it. People who yell “Well of course they don’t want to be forced to pay more to have people access their information, they’re giants” are missing the point. It’s true, they don’t want to pay, why would they? It hurts their bottom line. But the point is, if they have to pay, they can.

Can you?

That’s the thing you need to be asking yourself here. Can you afford to pay to get your name heard because an ISP has decided your content is taking too much traffic? Take me, for example. I host a completely free resource of information here at Third Culture Kid Life for TCKs, their parents, their families, and their friends. Over the past three years, it has become quite a trafficked site. I know that if ISPs get their way, they won’t bother with the likes of me right off the bat. But one day, they might. And if they do, what would happen?

Unfortunately for me, and hopefully my readers feel the same, Third Culture Kid Life would be no more. My content could be inaccessible all because I didn’t pay an ISP to get a pass-through to my website so that people could load my page. And with the content of the world at my fingertips, that entire concept is absolutely terrifying.

So please, while you still can: Take a stand. Fight for a free and open internet. Fight for Net Neutrality. Let’s keep the culture of the world, and the culture of the internet that connects it, as strong as it has always been.

You don’t know me, and sadly, I do not know you. Not as I should at least, not as I’d like. I have seen so many countries in my life that admitting I’ve never set foot on your soil fills me with a massive amount of shame, especially seeing as I was so close just under two years ago, planning a trip en-route to a convention that unfortunately I had to cancel due to a snowstorm and your airport being closed. I was excited, too, to meet you. There’s something beautiful about knowing you’re going to step off a plane and be somewhere completely different, somewhere completely new that you’ve never seen before in your life. And while you’re so close to the country in which I spent the first measly four years of my life, sharing a border with it in fact, I have embarrassingly never managed to make my way up into your lands.

You see, I’m what the 21st century knows as a Third Culture Kid (TCK). I was born in one country (England), grew up all over the world with various 2-3 year stints in different countries, and adopted various cultures from each and every place I visited instead of a singular culture most common in children that grow up in a normal, mono-cultural lifestyle. One of the most interesting things that happens to TCKs is that they have an incredibly hard time learning how to relate to the concept of a “home.”

First Culture Kids (FCKs) form a natural attachment to their homeland, understanding that this place, the place that me, my family, my friends have all lived, is my home. Even when they move away from that location, should they choose to in their adult years, they always retain that level of connection to their home-town. TCKs don’t have that. We travelled from place to place in our developmental years, learning from various cultures, communities, and countries but never being tied to a singular cultural or patriotic experience. We’ve seen dozens of sides of dozens of coins, and each one has some sort of value to us, but that singular connection, that place we can call home, is completely foreign to us.

Take me, for example. I was born in England, but England is just the country where my parent’s lived, where my extended family lives, and another place I frequently visit to share in scattered moments once a year with family members that go about their normal day-to-day lives without me ever being part of them. In a sense, my brother and I are the forgotten members of the family, the ones that are of course still in the thoughts of our extended family, but never like everyone else, never truly connected to the daily lives that everyone else shares so closely. We’re just too distant, too different, and too… foreign.

The reason why I tell you this is so that you can understand the gravity of my plea. Not understanding the concept of a home, not being tied to the lives that so many people live on a daily basis, TCKs have a tendency to view the world quite differently from grounded, level-headed individuals such as yourselves. We’re a bit of a mess, you could say, but that mess has its moments of realisation, and I believe that one of those moments is now:

I have a passport, you see, my ticket to the world. With it, I can travel almost anywhere I choose, visit almost any place I could want to see, and continue to expand my knowledge of both individualised and globalised culture. It is a ticket to everything, this silly little piece of paper with nothing but my picture, name, a random number that was assigned to me as my life-long identification, all tucked away in this lovely little red book embossed with a beautiful logo. This passport is special, because while it sits comfortably beside a blue passport that reads United States of America, this one, the passport I was granted due to my birthright, carries so much more meaning to a child of the world such as myself.

This passport is one for The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I have spent years of my life trying to understand what it is about that passport, that simple little red book that brings me so much pride. And you see, while I carry two, one for a country in which I currently reside and one for a country in which I have hardly resided, the passport for the United Kingdom symbolizes everything that a TCK has come to learn about the world.

This book, formed because of pacts and unities dating centuries, was a truly glorious and unforgettable claim for unified globalisation. It is the success story behind attempts that preceded it and followed it time and time again, a truly world shattering statement that we free people are better together than we are apart. That through each other, we can achieve so much more, go so much further, and be so much stronger than we had ever even imagined.

Having seen this world through so many different cultural lenses, having watched so many people strive for exactly the same thing in so many different languages, looking at my passport and knowing that long before I set eyes on this world, there were people fighting to bring it together in a way that strengthened their neighbours, not weakened them or belittled them or scared them, I couldn’t be more proud to carry that document.

So please, Scotland. I beg of you. Do not leave. I have no home like you know, I have no sense of national self devotion, no patriotism the way you would understand. I am a child of the world. And as such, I beg of you to stay. I beg of you to claim the authority you seek, but as a nation united with others in a quest to bring people together, not force them apart. Both you and your neighbour nations, the community for which I hold the single most important document of my life, are something to be so proud of, something that I am proud of each and every day from thousands of miles away, knowing that at any time I can return and settle down with pride in what you’ve all achieved.

So please, don’t go. You have the power to push unity on, or show that further separating the world is the right thing to do. And believe me when I say, we are all just people of the world fighting to be heard. Please, don’t go. Please, stay with us for globalisation, and make this TCK proud.

If you’re here, then you’re either a Third Culture Kid, the parent of a TCK, or have some sort of intimate relationship with TCK life and/or expatriation. In some way, you at the very least partially understand that TCKs are a mess of culture driven by this seemingly unnatural desire to get up and go, experience more, and jump from location to location leaving everything behind in hopes of capturing that next piece of the puzzle that makes up multiculturalism. People have coined us everything from Permanent Internationals to Global Nomads, and you know what, we’re proud of all the titles that non-travelers and international explorers alike have thrown our way. We embrace our multiculturalism with such ferocity that anyone would think we have in our possession something as precious and sought after as the fountain of youth.

We talk about how much we love the world, how much we always want to see more, how much we need to move and experience the next step. We talk about how we don’t mind saying goodbye, how we handle departure differently from everyone else, how nothing is permanent in our lives, even the culture we create. We talk about all the things we’ve seen, all the things we want to see, and how all these sights made us who we are or will make us into something better. We talk about going, moving, and the next step in what appears to be an endless path of places for which our thirst can never be quenched. But in all my time as an author for Third Culture Kids, the one thing I’ve never said is this:

I’m not done here yet.

It’s time that changed. When TCKs talk about what it is that makes them who they are, TCKs that have truly embraced their multiculturalism, there’s an oddly consistent trend in which we don’t really talk much about the place we are right now. We talk about the cultures of our past, the pieces we’ve already absorbed and are confident in explaining, the shining lights of memories past. We talk about the future and what it holds, the potential for new cultures and the promise of an ever-changing understanding on what it means to truly be a citizen of Earth and not a member of a single country. But we don’t ever really talk about where we are, right now.

In part it’s because we haven’t fully pieced together the elements of the culture we are currently experiencing, we haven’t decided on our final adoptions in regards to cultural development, and we know that by admitting that we are still learning, still adopting, we bind ourselves a little closer with the inevitable goodbyes that sit in our future. We know that by opening that door, we strengthen bonds to people that would start believing that they understand us, when the truth is we don’t want you to understand us because we aren’t like you. We don’t see the world as countries and pockets. We don’t believe that one person or culture is better than another. We don’t want to be another person in the herd of a like-minded community. We want to challenge everything, we want to make you think, and we want you to see the world as we do: That we are all just people, like everyone else, stuck here fighting to be more than just a forgotten name in a forgotten world.

But that’s not fair for the now. Because the truth is, as I sit here in Raleigh, North Carolina and look out at the rest of the world and consider the next inevitable step, a move that will absolutely come one day in my future, maybe soon, maybe not, I can’t help but shake that one thought in the back of my mind, one that counter-acts our entire external projection of what it means to be a TCK. The truth is, I’m not done here yet.

I know I’m not alone. I know that TCKs everywhere have whispered that same silent thought to themselves, maybe not everywhere, but somewhere. They’ve said quietly “But… I don’t want to go. I’m not done here yet. I need more time,” and no one has heard them.

Because who would we be, the TCKs that we are so proud of, if we let the world know that there was actually something about this place that was more special than all the others? Who would we be if we admitted that this culture is still growing, still adding to the pot of knowledge that we possess, and there’s more to it than we pretend to have already figured out? Who would we be, the people that are so confident in our ability to just let go and move on, if we admitted that in this place there are people that we just aren’t ready to do that with, that we just aren’t ready to leave behind and release from our world? Who would we be, if we admitted that we wanted to stay, if only for a little while longer?

But the truth is, we’ve all thought it. And we’ve all pretended we haven’t. And we’ve all moved on and gone to other places and left whatever it was behind just a little sooner than we would have liked.

But we don’t have to. It’s alright, you know. You can do it, if you really want to. You can look out over the trees or plains or deserts or mountains and think how beautiful they are. You can look at a colleague or a friend or a lover or a partner and think “I’m not ready to let you go.” You can get in your car or on the bus or on a bike and go from A to B without discovering anything new and know that you don’t really mind that you’ve taken this road before a thousand times and still find it fascinating.

You can admit that maybe, just maybe, you’re not quite done here yet. And if you really want, it’s alright if you choose to stay a little while longer.

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